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Sustainability of Open Source software communities beyond a fork: How and why has the LibreOffice project evolved?
Open accessAbstract
Many organisations are dependent upon long-term sustainable software systems and associated communities. In this paper we consider long-term sustainability of Open Source software communities in Open Source software projects involving a fork. There is currently a lack of studies in the literature that address how specific Open Source software communities are affected by a fork. We report from a study aiming to investigate the developer community around the LibreOffice project, which is a fork from the OpenOffice.org project. In so doing, our analysis also covers the OpenOffice.org project and the related Apache OpenOffice project. The results strongly suggest a long-term sustainable LibreOffice community and that there are no signs of stagnation in the LibreOffice project 33 months after the fork. Our analysis provides details on developer communities for the LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice projects and specifically concerning how they have evolved from the OpenOffice.org community with respect to project activity, developer commitment, and retention of committers over time. Further, we present results from an analysis of first hand experiences from contributors in the LibreOffice community. Findings from our analysis show that Open Source software communities can outlive Open Source software projects and that LibreOffice is perceived by its community as supportive, diversified, and independent. The study contributes new insights concerning challenges related to long-term sustainability of Open Source software communities.
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“They described how vendor dominance and 'conflicts in the origin project arose due to inadequate working processes, lack of congruence concerning project goals, and unclear (or in other ways inadequate) leadership' (p.129) resulted in the shuffling of some members staying with the original project and some leaving to the hard fork.”
From Freeriding and Rebellion: An Investigation of Open Source Vendor Relicensing and Member Hard Forking Events (2026) · cites this paper as Gamalielsson and Lundell 2014
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“Gamalielsson and Lundell (2014) explored the window in time when a hard fork provided a path towards sustainability of the OpenO ffice. org project.”
From Freeriding and Rebellion: An Investigation of Open Source Vendor Relicensing and Member Hard Forking Events (2026) · cites this paper as Gamalielsson and Lundell 2014
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“Others yet see the survival of open source challenged by internal threats instead of external ones (Gamalielsson & Lundell, 2014).”
From The sustainability of open source commons (2023) · cites this paper as Gamalielsson & Lundell, 2014
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“The newly forked open source project, LibreOffice, enabled new forms of participation and the development of a new future in relation to prior experiences.”
From Freeriding and Rebellion: An Investigation of Open Source Vendor Relicensing and Member Hard Forking Events (2026) · cites this paper as Gamalielsson and Lundell 2014
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“In this, a hard fork created a branch to which members of the original project could join to help ensure the sustainability of open source artefacts.”
From Freeriding and Rebellion: An Investigation of Open Source Vendor Relicensing and Member Hard Forking Events (2026) · cites this paper as Gamalielsson and Lundell 2014
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Metadata
- Authors
- Gamalielsson, J., & Lundell, B.
- Affiliations
- University of Skövde (SE)
- Corresponding author
- Gamalielsson, Jonas
- Venue
- Journal of Systems and Software
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2014-03
- Volume
- 89
- Pages
- 128-145
- ISSN
- 0164-1212 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2029743492
- Cited by
- 125
- References
- 71
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 18 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 20 · 2018: 17 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 4 · 2014: 6
- FWCI
- 6.09
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Journal of Systems and Software (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Science Applications › Open Source Software Innovations
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Software Engineering Techniques and Practices
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Software Engineering Research
- Keywords
- open source communities, software forks, LibreOffice, OpenOffice.org, community sustainability, developer communities, project activity, long-term sustainability
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